False hope: radiation monitoring in the Fukushima area

Last week, three Greenpeace radiation-monitoring teams took to the streets of Fukushima City and the heavily contaminated region of Iitate to again record and assess contamination threats.

Like earlier trips, we noticed decreased exposure rates in a few areas, but many hotspots remain throughout heavily populated Fukushima City. What is more concerning, however, is the official government radiation monitoring stations that have appeared throughout the city.

The story was familiar to us, as in March this year, while conducting radiation checks in a park in the suburb of Watari, we came across a newly installed official radiation monitoring post. This station showed a relatively low level of contamination when compared to levels we had measured previously, however, it was placed smack in the middle of a small area that had been clearly decontaminated. New soil had replaced the old, but as soon as you stepped off the cleaned area the levels of contamination rose sharply, and remained much higher throughout the park – with the exception of around the official monitoring post itself.

We had only measured this one post on that visit, and given it had only been recently installed we had hoped this would mark the start of a new initiative by the authorities to comprehensively decontaminate populated areas, and do more to keep the public informed of radiation risks.

Unfortunately, we have now found that this is not the case.

Between October 16 and 19, Greenpeace checked 40 monitoring posts throughout Fukushima city. For 75% of them, the radiation readings close to the posts were lower than readings for their immediate surroundings. Contamination levels within 25 metres of the posts were up to six times higher than at the posts themselves.

The authorities claim they do not intend these monitoring posts to be misleading, stating that they publish information about which areas around the posts have been decontaminated. However, for the people living in the areas and anyone passing by, they certainly give the impression that contamination levels are lower than what they may be just a few metres from the posts.

Not only that, the decontamination work remains patchy. The authorities have taken care of the low hanging fruit such as some public parks and school yards, but our teams found that many hotspots remain throughout the communities, and little is being done to clean them up.

We saw only a few groups of cleanup workers in Fukushima City in the week we were there. By contrast, we saw many decontamination workers in the Iitate region. This is a mountainous, heavily forested area, and it is very complicated to remove all contamination from the environment. Even if the workers are successful in cleaning houses and workplaces, the risk of recontamination is high, with every gust of wind, rain storm, or spring snow melt bringing new concentrations of radiation down from the hills. To say the authorities are optimistic is an understatement. All they can currently offer to the broken communities of Iitate is false hope.

On this trip we interviewed six former residents of Iitate, and what they all have in common is a distinct mistrust of official information, and little confidence in the Government’s ability to fix the radioactive contamination problems they live with every day. There is a palpable sense of loss, and while it is clear that people would love nothing more than to return and rebuild their lives, many know in their hearts that life as they knew it is gone. With their houses, workplaces and fields contaminated and communities scattered, they are now seeking closure and fair compensation so they can start anew elsewhere.

We also spoke with local government authorities who lamented that they were hamstrung by a lack of funding, a lack of manpower, and a lack of direction and engagement from the national government.

This not only again highlights the Japanese Government’s relentless underplaying of both the seriousness and scope of this nuclear disaster, but it also once again speaks to its inability to put the health and safety of its people before politics. It has wasted funding from the Fukushima reconstruction budget on whaling as plant workers went without proper health checks. Now it is wasting resources and time decontaminating empty rural areas in a misguided attempt to repopulate evacuated areas, when people are still at risk right in Fukushima City.

The government is still pretending it has everything under control when it clearly doesn’t, and unfortunately there is no easy way out. All it can do is admit the reality of this situation and give it the attention it deserves.

Only then can it give the people the information they need to protect themselves.

Only then can it provide proper compensation to those that have had their lives upended, so they can come to terms with this tragedy and move on.

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(Unregistered) WALLY515
says:

We have reports of an explosion at unit 4 and fires. Rumor mill has gone wild with speculation on radiation levels. I see on radiationnetwork.com that...

We have reports of an explosion at unit 4 and fires. Rumor mill has gone wild with speculation on radiation levels. I see on radiationnetwork.com that it is a moderate 10 and sometime 8 which your piture verifies in this article. Can you confirm or deny an explosion or additional fukushima crisis on or about 10/22/12?

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(Unregistered) LillyS
says:

Japanese government is busy covering up the radiation contamination that is spreading all over Japan. It's in the air, water, soil, and food. Th...

Japanese government is busy covering up the radiation contamination that is spreading all over Japan. It's in the air, water, soil, and food. They are spending money on propaganda instead of saving lives.

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Jake Price
says:

I Just returned from Fukushima and Iiate where I spent 2 weeks working on a film about the radiation. (And was there for the entire month of August.) ...

I Just returned from Fukushima and Iiate where I spent 2 weeks working on a film about the radiation. (And was there for the entire month of August.) The hotspots that I came across were alarming, one registering 47 microsieverts--colleagues have come across twice that amount in the forbidden areas.

I have been documenting an artist who has been unearthing irradiated soil and exposing it on photographic paper to record what is in the soil. For a preview of the film I invite you to follow this link: